


Be Pure

by vayleen



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-08
Updated: 2008-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vayleen/pseuds/vayleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emotions are powerful things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Pure

The finest silks came from the prosperous village just outside Ba Sing Se. There, the old crones worked in the cocooneries, crafted by earthbenders to make the ideal environment for the silkpedes to spin contentedly. There, they trained their daughters and daughter’s daughters in the ancient art of silk weaving.

Perhaps this village made such fine silks because they had healthy mulberry trees, with strong branches growing and reaching into the caves for the silkpedes to live on. Perhaps their delicate and vibrant flowers made the best dyes. Or perhaps is was the fact that they clung to old superstition.

“Be pure,” they’d say, if one were to ask for the secret of silk.

For they believed that the silkpedes were sensitive to human emotion. If one were to enter the cocooneries with an unsettled heart or body, the little larvae would know, and would stop spinning in their distress. So always make sure to leave spirits that do not belong outside the caves, and use the mind to enter with sound heart and sound body.

* * *

It was shameful that Uncle’s storage closet was becoming another one of the places Azula hated. And she would hate it, like she did whenever she thought about her old bedroom, the ruins of the Western Air Temple, and an airy, frozen secluded courtyard in the Northern Water Tribe.

Sokka was pulling her head back by her hair so that he could fasten his lips onto her neck. Azula gasped, and held her breath, so her voice wouldn’t betray them. Her hands were precise, though they were shaking, as she shoved aside the clothes in her way and unfastened his pants. He was lifting the wrapped skirt of her robed dress above her thighs, freeing her legs so that she could wrap them around his waist and pull him close to her.

Azula was up against the wall when he pushed inside her. They kissed each other fiercely, swallowing any noises the other might have made. They had to be quick, but that didn’t matter, she was always hot for him. From the moment their eyes met across the dinner table, she knew this would happen, and her body flushed in anticipation and stayed that way until Sokka finally had his arms around her.

He was moving faster, pushing harder. Their arms were wrapped so tight around the other’s body, if it weren’t for their clothes, it wouldn’t be possible for two people to be closer together. The wall scraped against her back and later she’d have to keep it covered for weeks as the red skin healed. She clenched her abdomen and tried to pull him deeper, feeling hungry and greedy for him.

There was heat under her skin, Azula could taste his sweat as it rolled down his face and into their locked mouths. She was losing her mind, she could feel it, and her whole body felt tight. Then she felt nothing and everything at once, as her vision went white, like she had finally, completely, turned into the energy of life.

She came back to her senses too quickly. Now her mind and rational were back in control, overruling the desires of her body and heart. She lowered her legs but found her knees weren’t working right, and Sokka had to support her until she had her footing.

Azula hated the shame in his blue eyes as his finger caught the hair stuck to her cheek and brushed it back. It was a tender gesture, but she hated it. She hated herself.

“You should go clean yourself up,” Azula said, turning away from him. “I promised Jing Su I’d meet him at the Palace gardens.”

“Azula-” he said, moving to try and catch her eye.

“Your wife is probably looking for you too,” she said, moving past him.

Sometimes Sokka would try and comfort her, bizarre as it was. Sometimes she managed to say the right thing so that he would get angry and leave.

Azula waited with her back to him until she heard him leave. Then she sat on the floor. She didn’t cry. But she waited until the emotions swirling inside her stopped before she felt she could disguise them and keep her face blank.

Times like this were the only times that made it difficult.

* * *

Human emotions were large, intimidating things. No matter if they were happy, sad, angry, or humorous, little silkpedes would feel these gigantic anomolies of the human heart and shudder. Sometimes they would forget how to weave and would die prematurely, aching to understand what had happened.

So it was important to always feel nothing but peace when close to a cocoonery. 

Part of the lifestyle for silk workers was to keep emotional things from bottling up. Which meant living a pure, peaceful life. If something caused trouble, that worker could’t go into the cocoonery until the trouble was past.

The little village outside Ba Sing Se was peaceful. No one had secrets festering, like thievery or adultery, that would ruin the progress of their trade.

* * *

Did it count as one mistake if they made the same one over and over? Or was it still several mistakes?

He shouldn’t have let himself reveal so much apprehension when they met the old gang for dinner at Iroh’s tea shop. Mostly, he was happy to see everyone, save for two people. Of course they would be there. This was the Annual Peace Summit and Jing Su was a brilliant diplomat and government official for Fire Lord Zuko’s Nation.

Sokka really had no reason to hate Jing Su as much as he did. He was a good warrior, a skilled firebender, and a protective father. Except he was Azula’s husband. And for that, the irrational disparity between him and the other man would persist.

He felt his wife’s violet eyes peering over at him while they ate dinner. He looked at her, smiled, leaned over to whisper in her ear some silly, witty observation about the food, and Suki giggled. Then he looked up across the table, and saw Azula was looking at him.

Time must have stopped. There was no other explanation for how in the brief moment when their eyes met, before she looked away, that so much could happen. He felt his heart swell with need and lust, heard thousands of alarms in his head warning him not to give in, though it was already too late. He relived the entire incident after Katara and Aang got married in the Spirit Oasis. Afterwards, Sokka was soaked from the melted ice and had to tell Suki he fell in the ocean, ha ha ha, isn’t he clumsy...

Her eyes were fierce, molten gold full of desire. She quickly looked away. Sokka looked at the ceiling, his fingers already twitching for the feel of her soft hair between them.

Spirits help them, why couldn’t there be control? One day Sokka would accept that because of this one woman, everything in his life was a miserable mistake, and he would torture himself trying to figure out exactly what point he made the mistake.

* * *

Occasionally, the silkpede larvae would start weaving again after they felt the push and pull of strong human emotion. But their troubled little spirits would never be able to weave the pure white silk needed for the dyes to take to the fabric once woven.

The more emotion the little ones felt, the more the white silk stained with grays and browns.

When the silk workers found a colony of silkpedes weaving stained cocoons, they would shake their heads sadly, collect the little larvae, and release them into the wild trees outside the villages and the caves.

“So sad that they’re sensitive,” the villagers would say. And then they would gossip, for obviously someone entered the caves with a strong, emotional secret and it was only a matter of time before the villagers found out who.

* * *

Iroh knew he was well into the winter of his life, but he still enjoyed visits from the men and women he still thought of as children, even though their children were as old as they were when their adventures first started. He hummed quietly to himself the morning after they came over for dinner, putting away spices and tea leaves.

In a corner of the shelf was a wooden box Iroh had traded for at the last market. Those villagers always had the finest silks, and Iroh decided to take up another hobby, so he bought a box of silkpede larvae from them. Reputably, they were the best of the best.

He took the box down from the shelf and opened it to feed the larvae some leftover greens. But his face grew troubled when he saw the little ones weaving the darkest, blackest silk he had ever seen.

Iroh would have to ask those old crones about that at the next market.

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by the silk worms in the novel _MIddlesex_ by Jeffrey Eugenides, one of my favorite books.


End file.
